Examines the history and origins of witchcraft, from pre-history to the present day, considering why it still features so heavily in our culture

A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. “The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.

In 1645, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to drive out the presumed evil in their midst. Gaskill recounts the most savage witch-hunt in English history. By the fall of 1647 at least 250 people had been captured, interrogated, and tried, with more than 100 hanged.

Between Two Worlds is a story teeming with people on the move, making decisions, indulging or resisting their desires and dreams. In the seventeenth century a quarter of a million men, women, and children left England's shores for America. Some were explorers and merchants, others soldiers and missionaries; many were fugitives from poverty and persecution. All, in their own way, were adventurers, risking their lives and fortunes to make something of themselves overseas. They irrevocably changed the land and indigenous peoples they encountered - and their new world changed them. But that was only half the story. The plantations established from Maine to the Caribbean needed support at home, especially royal endorsement and money, which made adventurers of English monarchs and investors too. Attitudes to America were crucial, and evolved as the colonies grew in size, prosperity, and self-confidence. Meanwhile, for those who had crossed the ocean, America forced people to rethink the country in which they had been raised, and to which they remained attached after emigration. In tandem with new ideas about the New World, migrants pondered their English mother country's traditions and achievements, its problems and its uncertain future in an age of war and revolution. Using hundreds of letters, journals, reports, pamphlets and contemporary books, Between Two Worlds recreates this fascinating transatlantic history - one which has often been neglected or misunderstood on both sides of the Atlantic in the centuries since.

One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story. Helen Duncan - known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for her uncontainable nature - was one of the most popular mediums of the twentieth century, holding seances around the country where she was believed to manifest the spirits of the dead. What happens when we die? It was the question of the age for a generation which had endured one world war and now was living through another. Mrs Duncan's seances offered an answer. But when she started foretelling naval disasters, she also attracted the unwelcome attention of the secret service. And so just weeks before the Normandy landings, absurdly, anachronistically, she was prosecuted for witchcraft and jailed. Was Nell a conjurer, a martyr or a security risk? Hellish Nell was first published in 2001 to widespread acclaim. It remains in this revised edition a fascinating window into the unsettled spiritual and psychological mood of the times: a sensational tale of spectacle, credulity and cruelty, and of Britain's last witch.

Malcolm Gaskill's new study takes a fresh look at past and present research and puts the history of witchcraft in England back into perspective. Taking a thematic approach, but using a chronological structure, Gaskill's study is readily accessible to all those approaching the topic for the first time.

The author of The Ruin of All Witches returns with a gripping, vividly told journey of rediscovery, uncovering his uncle's past as a soldier, prisoner, fugitive and partisan in World War Two Italy Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph's wartime adventures: he'd been a prisoner in Italy, and he'd cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he'd faded into family folklore, lost to view. Until, one hot afternoon in an English country garden, a chance conversation set him off on his uncle's trail... What Ralph really did in the war was, he discovers, even more extraordinary than the exaggerations of family myth. From last-ditch fighting in the Libyan desert and incarceration in a Puglian prisoner-of-war camp, to desperate, dramatic escapes and the assuming of an entirely new identity among the peasants and partisans of the Italian alps, Gaskill traces a life transformed by conflict, while lifting the curtain on a long-forgotten episode of the Second World War. Yet The Glass Mountain is about more than war: it's a haunting exploration of what it means to encounter the past, and how we remember, forget and recover it. As he follows his uncle's path through dusty archives and the landscapes, towns and villages of present-day Italy, Gaskill finds himself confronted by questions that go to the heart of how we think about the people who came before us: Why do stories matter? How much of the past can ever be true?

The bestselling author of The Ruin of All Witches returns with a gripping, vividly told journey into his family's wartime past 'In this rich, engrossing book, Gaskill succeeds in his aim of writing ‘a story that in good conscience feels real’... As I finished his book, I began to see my own family’s past through his glass mountain' - Ian Ellison, Literary Review 'Gaskill's account is as much about what cannot be known about the past as what can still be reconstructed, even as the last witnesses to the Second World War pass from sight... his ability to explore the overgrown byways of history almost as a form of travel writing is again winningly on show here' - James Owen, The Sunday Times Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph’s wartime adventures: he’d been a prisoner in Italy, and he’d cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he’d faded into family folklore, lost to view. Until, one hot afternoon in an English country garden, a chance conversation set Gaskill on his uncle’s trail... What Ralph really did in the war was, he discovers, even more extraordinary than the exaggerations of family myth. From last-ditch fighting in the Libyan desert and incarceration in a Puglian prisoner-of-war camp, to desperate, dramatic escapes and the assuming of an entirely new identity among the peasants and partisans of the Italian Alps, Gaskill traces a life transformed by conflict, while lifting the curtain on a long-forgotten episode of the Second World War. Yet The Glass Mountain is about more than war: it’s a haunting exploration of what it means to encounter the past, and how we remember, forget and recover it. As he follows his uncle’s path through dusty archives and the landscapes, towns and villages of present-day Italy, Gaskill finds himself confronted by questions that go to the heart of how we think about the people who came before us: Why do stories matter? How much of the past can ever be true?

Crime and law have now been studied by historians of early modern England for more than a generation. Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England attempts to reach further than most conventional treatments of the subject, to explore the cultural contexts of law-breaking and criminal prosecution, and to recover their hidden social meanings. In this sense the book is more than just a 'history from below': it is a history from within. Conversely, the book explores crime to shed light on the long-term development of English mentalities in general. To this end, three serious crimes - witchcraft, coining and murder - are examined in detail, revealing new and important insights into how religious reform, state formation, secularisation, and social and cultural change (for example, the spread of literacy and the availability of print) may have transformed the thinking and outlook of most ordinary people between 1550 and 1750.

No description provided.